


sticks and stones and weed and bones

by aeroport_art



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Armchair Therapy, Denial, M/M, Meta, One-Sided Attraction, POV Original Character, Past Underage, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-28
Updated: 2008-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:32:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeroport_art/pseuds/aeroport_art
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's forced to see a shrink, who's more perceptive than he's comfortable with. Stanford-era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sticks and stones and weed and bones

**Author's Note:**

> Meta, thinly disguised as Wincest. I don't know why I'm so interested in Sam's lost years at Stanford, but I am. Can't get away from this subject.

“Did it make you feel angry? The way he treated you.”

Sam’s mouth opens, shuts. He shifts in his seat, says, “That isn’t the way it worked.”

The doctor’s pen bobs across his clipboard, Sam tracking the progress of it through slanted eyes. The blue heel of it stops—something is scratched out, then hastily written over. Finally, “So how _does_ it work?”

This one, Sam has an answer for. He leans forward, hands clasped together at knee-height, and says: “We weren’t angry with each other—not really. We just both wanted the same thing, and didn’t want anyone else to have it.”

The doctor cocks an eyebrow and Sam, caught in a half-truth, laughs a short, breathy exhale. At least the man earns his keep. Sam amends, “Didn’t want anyone else to have _him_.”

The mood in the room breaks. Doc checks his watch, shuffles papers about and makes to get up, one hand out as he says to Sam, “I think we made good progress today, Sam. Now, I know the school only requires these three sessions but if you want to come back at any time, my door is always open to you.”

Sam grasps the doctor’s hand, gives it a firm up-down shake. It says, _thanks, but no thanks._

Doc presses it, though, personalizing more than he’s probably supposed to when he says, “I’d like for you to come back. I…”

This time, it’s Sam who arches an eyebrow. It’s not every day you find a therapist who’s got room under their skin. Though for the record, Sam’s always been good about finding his way there.

“I’d really like to hear more about him,” he finishes carefully, as Sam pulls out from the grip, irritation welling up in his chest.

“There isn’t much to hear about,” Sam replies. “He was just.” Frowns. Tries again, “He was everything, but not enough. Not enough to share, at least. And between us, between me and my Dad, it wasn’t me who won. So here I am.” Sam wipes his palm against his thigh. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a class to make. Think I’m already late.”

Sam turns to go, backpack slung over one shoulder. He’s already got a twist on the doorknob when the doctor blurts out, “Wait.”

Sam sighs. _This better be good._ He turns around, surprised when he’s faced with a pleading expression etched into the grooves of the doctor’s wrinkles. The doc asks, “Who _was_ he?”

Knee-jerk reaction tells Sam to just leave—he’s shared enough already—but the doctor looks pained, like if he doesn’t know the answer to this one question, it’ll itch at him for the remainder of the day, week, the span of his career. _Who could do that? What kind of person could fuck up that boy so good and proper?_

Alright then, whatever. It’s not like Sam’s coming back again. 

He smiles wryly, and says, “He was my brother.”

Sam leaves now, doesn’t send a backwards glance or anything.

\-----

 

A year later, Sam’s picking at a thread from the ancient chair he’s waiting in. He’s about a half hour late, but the therapist is still holed up in his office, lacing Sam’s visit with an extra ounce of indignity.

When he’s finally admitted inside, everything looks remarkably the same. Doesn’t matter that it’s three semesters later—that Sam’s grown his hair wild (not just because he could, but because he wanted to), or that Sam’s good at his game now, Sam’s a fucking brand new man—it doesn’t matter one bit. When he sits down in that overstuffed chair, it may as well be his first year again (fresh off the Greyhound with his life six states away…seven, eight as the skinwalkers move east).

“Sam Winchester,” the doc says, like it’s a pleasant surprise. Like he’d be here if he didn’t have to be.

They get into the same dance again. Sam’s a damned good liar, but he’d never been up against a fucking therapist. On his own, even, no Dad there to intimidate nor Dean to play fool. There’s just Sam, his lies, and the pinch of his mouth when Doc is getting too close. That was always something he needed to work on.

“We left off with your brother.”

Sam’s mouth twitches. “It’s been over a year. What, no catch up?”

“Not when we only have three sessions, forty-five minutes apiece. Not when you haven’t moved forward since the last time we talked.”

“What gave me away?” Sam leans back in his seat, going for casual.

“Trade secret,” the doctor replies, hint of a smile. 

Sam scowls. Jerks forward and says, “Look. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. So can we just, I don’t know, work something out? Like, say, I’ll make it clear to you I won’t be spilling my guts. Not now, not three weeks from now. We’ll make it easy on the both of us if we get that out of the way first.”

The doctor stares musingly at him, scratching the cap of his blue pen through the short scruff on his chin. If he jots something down on his clipboard, Sam’s gonna deck him. 

Doc’s hand drops down, poised to make paper judgments, and Sam quashes the urge to rattle off all the different places Doc could relocate that pen. Quickly suggests, instead, “So, you have a pack of cards, or something? We still have fifteen minutes to kill.”

“You know, a game doesn’t sound too bad right now.”

Sam stops fidgeting for a moment, and looks up through his bangs. “Really?”

“Yeah. Here’s how we play. I make a statement. If it’s true, you elaborate. If I’m wrong, well, you can take off early this week and I’ll still sign your paperwork.”

“How do you know I won’t lie just to get out of here?”

“Because Sam, I know you don’t lie—“ the doctor begins, when he notices the smirk that creeps up Sam’s mouth. “Let me rephrase that. You don’t lie when it’s about you.”

The smirk gets wider. “You’re a funny guy, Doc.”

Unfazed, the doctor clarifies, “You don’t lie when it comes to the way you feel.”

Sam sits up, face wiped carefully blank. They watch each other for a moment, though the jig is up and they both know it. Finally, Sam asks sarcastically, “Was that your statement?”

“No. This is my statement.” There’s a long lull while the doctor makes little marks on his clipboard, and Sam watches the pen, trying to figure what’s written. He might as well be trying to read lips though. Which, for the record, is something else he never got the hang of, much as Dad used to try and drum it into him.

“You said it wasn’t anger that you felt towards your father. That it was…” the doctor grapples for the right word— “…competition. Maybe the same kind of competition that compelled you to circumvent a few of the university’s rules last week—“

“For the love of—look, I didn’t _cheat—_ “

“—but, that is neither here, nor there. What I’m trying to say is, you’re a competitive guy, Sam. And it has nothing to do with your brother. He’s just the excuse. Your insatiable thirst to succeed comes from the fact that in your mind, you were never good enough for your father.”

“…Wow. You sugar-coat everything for all your patients, or am I just special?”

Met with the doctor’s unwavering look, Sam feels vaguely chastened, so he kicks the sarcasm from his demeanor. Opts instead for schooling his face into one of his fail-safe masks—the one that doesn’t bother to hide itself as such, but proves inscrutable nonetheless—as he buys time to process the doctor’s weighty, laden words. He keeps coming back to this: _It has nothing to do with your brother._ The thought strangely appeals to him. And it fits, too, if Sam stops to believe it. It could very well be that his dad was that much of an asshole to have stoked Sam’s issues to this—to running halfway across the country, just to get out from underneath that disapproving thumb.

When he’s admitted to himself the plausibility of the doctor’s statement, Sam replies with a nod of his head. “Okay, maybe you’re right. So my issues have nothing to do with Dean.” Sam notices the disconnect on Doc’s face, so he explains “Dean, my brother. Dean had nothing to with it. It was always between me and my dad.”

Sam thinks he can handle this part. He’ll pull out some fragment of his past, some sob story that’ll make the old doc clap his hands together with fix-it glee. He’ll orate a damned autobiography, right here, if it’ll get a move on with the miracle cures the doctor seems so confident in being able to administer.

But before Sam can begin talking, choice anecdote hot on his tongue, Doc leans in and peers over his horn-rimmed glasses. Squints a little. Says, “No. Wait. I got it wrong.”

Sam frowns.

He wants to argue, _no, you got it right,_ because the evidence is all there. It’s all there like damned, sticky glue, in the back of his mind—every impassive look that Sam got from his dad, every shared smile between his father and his favorite son—it’s all there. Sam wants to _share_ all of a sudden, because they’ve hit the proverbial coffin, Sam’s issues inside (and maybe—just _maybe_ —a way to put them to rest). But Doc’s piling the dirt back just as quick. 

And now, it’s besides the point, because Doc’s got the paperwork signed and dated and shoved back in Sam’s hand.

“We had a deal, didn’t we?” the doctor shrugs. “I thought you’d be glad to go.”

Sam looks down at his signed form. “I am. I mean. I’m glad to go.”

There’s another awkward pause before Sam gets with the program. He reaches down, grabs his stuff and goes.

On the way to class, he tries not to feel so cheated. Tells himself, of all the things to save a Winchester’s soul, it wasn’t going to a _therapy_ session with the university shrink.

\-----

 

Sam never told anyone, but his first kiss was Dean.

“Tell me about Dean.”

Sam’s kept this highly embarrassing, adolescent fact to himself for almost a decade now, and he sure as hell isn’t gonna start blabbing now. So he says instead, “I never told anyone, but my first scar was from Dean.”

“Your _first_ scar?”

Sam pauses. “I don’t mean it like that. My dad was an asshole, but he never beat me or anything.” Sam’s brain automatically (insidiously) draws up a memory of an early hunt—remembers the shriek of rock salt though the window, and the shrapnel piercing his skin. Dean cleaning his wounds, afterwards. “Not directly, at least,” Sam concludes.

“Alright. So, your first scar?”

It was a complete accident. This was way back, back when he and Dean still shared one bed, their Dad in the other. It’s a stupid story, really. Twelve year old kid rolls over in the middle of the night. He’s dreaming, or maybe not—something in between—rolls over and mauls the closest warm thing next to him. He wakes up on top of his older brother, frozen mouth against mouth, and it’s the look on his brother’s face when Dean opens his eyes and _realizes_ that gets Sam to scamper off, mortified and confused, touching fingers to tingling lips with a strange sense of awe, thinking _First kiss. That was my first kiss._

The doctor clears his throat.

“Right,” Sam says. “The scar. It was a complete accident. We got in a fight. You know, brothers. We were wrestling, and—“ Sam halts, wets his lips. “Well, I ended up banging my head against the corner of a table.” Sam leaves out the part where he’d jolted up from Dean’s hold like he’d been electrocuted, because, dude, this was only a week after he’d molested his brother in bed, and hardly the best occasion to be caught with a hard-on. It was either waiting for Dean to notice or the stitches on his forehead, and Sam _gladly_ took the latter.

“What was the fight about?”

How many scuffles have he and Dean gotten into? Too many to keep track of, that’s for sure. Sam’s a believer in probability though, and _probably,_ it was this: 

“Me and my Dad don’t see eye to eye. Not even close—but the thing is, we never fight. Well, we fight, like, sure we’ll scream at each other. Or do the cold shoulder thing, the passive aggressive thing—whatever. It’s just words. We don’t fight because we think it’ll change anything, we just do it to _do it._ It’s us saying to each other, _I love you, but god damn it, I just don’t understand you._ That’s all it is.” 

Sam stops for a moment. But he doesn’t pick up again, and the silence stretches for a beat too long. Doc looks like he wants to make some encouraging noise, but to his credit, he keeps his trap shut.

Still, Doc’s brown eyes regard him, perceptive and knowing. _Fine,_ Sam wants to huff. He brings his hand up to his bangs, pushes them aside and points to his hairline, where a thin, pale scar is hidden—says, “The fight that gave me this scar happened because my dad and I don’t see eye to eye. But Dean does. He does with me, and he does with my dad, and so, me and _him,_ we fight. We fight because if I punch hard enough, if he pins me down long enough, maybe something will change. Maybe I’ll understand my dad, after Dean’s ground it in with his knee. Or maybe Dean will hear me out and get through to Dad, after I’ve cut my knuckles on his teeth. It’s always such a near thing, our fights…just _this side_ of comprehension, of everything turning out okay between me, Dean, and my dad.”

If there’s a shiver going up Sam’s spine, tingling between shoulder blades and burrowing deep, it isn’t because Sam thinks there’s still a chance they’ll all be okay, because he doesn’t. That fairy tale was put to bed the day Dad threw him out. Nipped in the bud the day Dean stayed with Dad. And Dean? Dean’s never coming back.

 _Not gonna happen,_ Sam repeats, rolling his shoulders, before he notices the Doc’s long silence. “So?” Sam prompts. “What’s the verdict?”

“Well,” Doc says, re-animating as he straightens his glasses. Good, ‘cause Sam was beginning to think he’d fallen asleep or something. “There’s a core conflict here, that much is clear. You live like you have something to prove, Sam. And while this is perfectly normal, even healthy to a certain extent, in your case it’s not. The way you achieve and overcome everything in your path is…it’s extreme, and it’s _unnatural._ And the part where this becomes a burden rather than a boon, is that it’s getting in the way of your emotional growth. You can’t mature and move on when something’s anchoring you in your past like this, because the harder you struggle to ignore it, the harder it will hit back down the road.”

Sam listens with a frown on his face that darkens the longer Doc goes on. _You’re wrong, I’m over them,_ Sam wants to say. But if he kicks up a fuss about it, it’ll just prove the doc’s point. Asks instead, “What is that even supposed to mean?” with a stony face. 

“It means I’m going to need a little more time with you, Sam, before I can give you any answers. All I know is, there’s some conflict inside you, keeping you back, and while experience and theories all point to your father being the pivotal subject, I’m just not convinced that that’s all there is to it.”

“What’s not to convince?” Frustration leeches into Sam’s voice, filtering top-down until he’s hunched forward, vibrating with it. “My Dad raised us like goddamned jarheads since the day I was born, practically—never mind it wasn’t in my nature, never mind that I wanted _nothing to do with it_. He snatched Dean away from—from a good life. You don’t even know.” There are memories knotted up, twisted into ugly ropes of everything Dean had to do, to become, just so Dad could chase his obsession. “My brother, the clay soldier. No dreams of being a firefighter, or astronaut, or what the fuck ever—not for my brother. And Dad, he tried to steal my future too, but I’m the one who got away. I _got away_ , and I’m making something of myself, and just because I’m not gonna screw it up, this makes me _emotionally stunted?_ ” Sam calls bullshit. It’s such _bullshit._ He shakes the hair out of his eyes to allow for the full effect of his glare, and the _fuck you_ is implicit.

Doc gets the hint. The softening of his shoulders speak of relent, and he overtly checks his watch. “Alright Sam. I think we’re touching on some really interesting stuff, but we’re out of time for today. Now, I don’t want you to write anything off just yet. In the time before our last session, ask yourself if you’ve really moved on. Come back next week with your conclusion, and we’ll take it from there.”

Sam shoves his paperwork across the low table between them. Doc sighs, signs it as Sam watches on between narrowed eyes. Sam bangs the door on his way out.

\-----

 

It’s just that, he’s happy with where he is now. Sam’s actually _happy_. He’s got Jess—God, he’s got _Jessica Moore_ for a girlfriend. He’s got friends who’ve known him for longer than a semester, and professors who’d trip over themselves to write glowing recommendation letters. There’s an apartment with posters he picked out waiting for him to come home to, and tomorrow holds a future that doesn’t end in bloodshed—not his or Dad’s or Dean’s—in fact, nobody Sam loves is dying tonight, not in this life.

You can’t blame a guy for wanting to cling on to something so ephemeral and ordinary and _perfect_ as his life at Stanford. 

That’s the thing—Sam doesn’t even _want_ to know what’s keeping him so stuck on the past, because what if he actually figures it out? What’s he supposed to do then?

\-----

 

It’s their last session already, provided Sam can keep the school board off his back about his supposed transgression (the girl was drawing _baphomets_ on her test paper, for God’s sake. Sam was doing them all a favor by keeping an eye on her). 

He realizes it’s their last session, but he doesn’t feel any different. Still suspects therapy is just a pet project of self-indulgent narcissists. Thinks, _either way, this will all be over, quick as you please._

Sam didn’t count on what the doc had in mind, though. As soon as he’s stepped in, sat down, and propped his feet up on the low table, Doc eagerly scoots to the edge of his chair and puts his palms on his knees. His bony hands looks strange, naked, without a clipboard and pen—Sam looks around, eventually locates the stupid things on the doc’s desk, over in the corner.

Doc clears his throat. “Tell me about Dean,” he says.

“I could swear we’ve gone over this before.”

“You’ve avoided the question every time. Skillfully, I might add—I never realize you’re doing it until you leave. Which is why I’m bringing it up again.”

So this is what it’s come to, huh? A hunter comes into a shrink’s office. Nobody wants to know about the gore—no one wants to hear about the truth, the surreal, or the implausible. It’s too much. It’s just too _much_. Too many horrors, things that make the skin crawl and the eyes bleed. When you’ve had to rinse a mother’s entrails off her child, or had to look people in the eye and tell them their loved ones did not, most certainly _did not_ go peacefully, you think maybe that has something to do with why, how, what it is that brings you to this space that says _you’re broken. You need to be fixed._

A hunter comes into a shrink’s office. There's so much sick, so much wrong—a ten-volume series of _Fucked Up_ in any given hunter’s history, but when you take it to the experts, you take it to the guys that are paid vast sums to heal your mind…this is what it comes to:

They want to know what your brother’s like. They chuckle when you lead in with the witches, and then ask instead: Is he taller, shorter than you? Does he like tomatoes on his burgers—does he hand you his diner pickles, or are you the one that gives it up? Is he easy or hard on you, and does he put you back together with band-aids when your body falls apart?

These are the things the doctors ask. And Sam…skeptical as he is about the whole damned institution, he wants to do it right this time. So he grits his teeth and tries to have a little faith in humanity, because if he doesn’t, where does that leave him? What’s a law degree and a two-year lease on an apartment got anything to do with anything, if Sam won’t be the one to give it meaning?

So, Sam answers him. He says, _shorter,_ with no small amount of glee. _Hates tomatoes, loves pickles. Will ask for extra, even after he’s stolen the ones off my plate._ Doc’s asking, so Sam replies, _he’s easy_ and _hard_. And Dean puts Sam back together, every single time.

This is the way their last session goes. Sam fills it with a hagiography of Dean—of useless facts and trivia Sam’s unconsciously collected over the span of his lifetime. Doc now knows the shape of Dean’s tiny birthmark (Georgia, the country), and the direction of the whorl of his hair (clockwise). He knows about the first girl Dean ever brought home and the last girl Dean banged in their shared room, Sam one thin wall away with the TV turned up.

Doc though, he’s gotta bring it down again. In the break between stories of Dean’s escapades—Sam could fill a library, honestly—the doctor looks at his watch and says point-blank,

“That’s enough, Sam. I think we’re good here.”

Sam trails off, feeling a little foolish as he puts his hands down from the air. “Okay,” he replies.

“So before I say anything, I’m really curious to hear in your own words—what are you trying to move away from, Sam?”

It’s an easy enough question. “My Dad, and everything he tried to force on me. Hell, he’s the only reason I left. It wasn’t Dean. It wasn’t ever because of Dean.”

“Interesting,” Doc replies, voice even.

Sam hears something underneath that word though—a dash of disbelief, maybe a pinch of smugness. Sam can’t help but defensively bite out, “So let’s hear what _you_ have to say on the topic of my life.”

“I’m not trying to tell you how to live, Sam,” he says mildly. “I just want to help you see the parts of your life that could use a little more re-evaluation. Don’t you want to be free?”

God, what kind of a question is that? To ask a person, to ask a _hunter_ that— _don’t you want to be free_ —it’s cruel, is what it is. Sam thinks he’s speaking on everyone’s behalf when he mutters, bitterly, “Of course. Of course I do.”

“So will you let me help you?”

A nod—no less vitriolic, but it’s still a nod. The doctor takes it.

“You think it’s your Dad. You think this, everything—“ Doc vaguely waves his hands about— “You think it’s because of your Dad. He wasn’t good enough or strong enough, or maybe you were the one lacking. Now, I’m not saying he isn’t part of it—I’m sure he is, in fact—but let me tell you something, Sam, it’s not about your father.”

Sam darts his gaze up to meet the doc’s. _It’s not?_ he wants to ask, but Sam knows better than that. He keeps silent, a feeling of unease settling over him, as the doctor continues,

“Oh, it’d be easier to say as much. Nobody looks twice at a good old-fashioned father complex. No, with you, Sam, it’s actually about your brother. The reason we’re sitting here now is because of your brother.”

There’s the moment it takes for the words to sink in, and then there’s the moment it takes for Sam to get the _meaning_. He snaps forward, eyes blazing, “What—what the fuck are you implying?”

The doctor makes no move to rescind his statement. Just looks at Sam, kind of sadly. “You said it yourself before, Sam, that it was competition between you and your dad. Just the natural butting of heads, and that Dean was the biggest prize, the trophy. You and your father both wanted him for your respective battles, because with Dean’s support and backing, there would be an unequivocal leader in your family.”

“Right. But that’s all true. I don’t know what you’re thinking, or what’s written in those damned notes of yours, but I left because of my _Dad_. What you’re saying, it’s—“

“Hey, hear me out, first. I think you’re right about what your father means to you. But the part where the issues get muddled is…it wasn’t just that your brother was the biggest prize. For you, Sam, Dean _was_ the prize.”

This is the point where Sam should leave. He should, he really, really should. The doctor’s not stopping though, not for anything. Just barrels forward, “He was all you ever wanted, and the fact that your father got to keep him? That— _that’s_ why you left. Without Dean fully marked as yours, there was no point to any of it. You only stayed so long as you thought there was some chance your family’s dynamic could tip in your favor. That Dean would…”

Doc trails off into silence as he takes in Sam’s stricken expression. Chooses to simply fold his hands in his lap and lean back in his seat, because some things…well, some things don’t need to be said aloud. They both know exactly what Doc means.

\-----

 

Sam will never, ever tell anyone, but his last kiss before Jess was with Dean.

It was right after he’d been found out, in the middle of junior year of high school. Sam had been working on his college applications; normally he’d fill some of it out while Dean was at work or out with Dad, but in this case the stupid, finicky essay was taking all day. Stashed it right into his drawer, thinking he could get back to it after dinner, but Dean had got there first.

 _“What the fuck is this?”_ he’d demanded, one hand gripping the half-written essay, the other gesturing angrily at it. But the thing is, Dean’s not stupid. He _knew_ what it was—his understanding was written all over his face, after the initial disbelief had given way to every emotion Dean never learned to hide (not from Sam, at least).

And with those emotions brimming right on the surface, Sam had panicked. He couldn’t just stand there and watch the betrayal ripple across Dean’s expression. So, without thinking, he’d fisted his hands in his brother’s shirtfront and yanked him up out of the chair. Off-balance, Dean tripped into him and Sam tugged just right, got Dean where he wanted him (his mouth on his brother’s). Sam had thought, maybe they could skip the inevitable fight and get to the part where Sam asked (begged) Dean to come with him. He’d just ask through actions, rather than words—something his brother could always appreciate.

So, that’s exactly what Sam did. And it was a good kiss—terrifying, sure, with the way his chest had seized up, his throat tight with something unnamable—but no one ever said good kisses and painful ones had to be mutually exclusive. There’s a reason the word _bittersweet_ exists, and this kiss was one of those.

The black eye Dean gave him after, though? That just plain hurt.

\-----

 

The doctor patiently regards Sam across the table—lets the kid take his time to think about what’s been suggested.

Finally, Sam concludes, “What you’re saying, Doc, it’s wrong. It is. My brother and I—we were close. Had to be, growing up the way we did. But what you’re _saying_ is just…it’s _incorrect_. I mean, what even gave you the idea?”

Doc sighs. The kid has no clue, not even when it’s as plain as day to the rest of the world. So Doc puts it as simply as he can: “You smiled.”

Sam shoots him an incredulous look. “So?”

“So,” Doc repeats. “In all the time I’ve ever sat with you, talked with you—whether it was about classes or what you did over the weekend, your better memories of your father or even when you were telling me about Jess—only Dean. You only ever smiled like that, like…” Doc runs through his mental thesaurus, trying to find an appropriate adjective or explanation for the soft look in Sam’s eyes, but nothing even close comes up. He just rephrases, “You only ever _really_ smiled when you were talking about Dean.”

“Jesus,” Sam remarks. He turns pensive, then, and focused, forehead wrinkling as he visibly turns the doctor’s words over in his head. Eventually, Sam comes to again and squarely lifts his eyes to hold Doc’s gaze. Sam says tiredly, “A smile’s just a smile, Doc. You’re staking too much on the fact that, yeah, I love my brother.” Here Sam curls his lip, for the briefest of moments, before he continues pointedly, “Dean’s my _brother_. I don’t think I need to say any more.”

It frustrates him, when patients think one statement automatically precludes another from existing. He hears it all the time: “I’m _married,_ ” like it will stop a man from committing adultery. “I _love_ him,” like someone can’t both love and _hate_ somebody. The constrictions people will set up in their minds is simultaneously fascinating and, as in this case, sometimes so damned _frustrating_.

It isn’t as if he can blame the kid, though. After all, this is something dark they’re touching upon—could open, would _probably_ open up another whole can of worms. Maybe Sam’s got a point. What’s so terrible about a deep, ferocious appetite for overachievement, when it means he won’t have to confront the depths of how much he loves his brother?

On the other hand, if Sam would just _see_. Could take the tension right out of those shoulders—shoulders too burdened for any young man. Could ease the hard line and guarded smiles of Sam’s expressive mouth, the way it only ever does when his brother is of topic.

Lord, but this is a tough call. Doc honestly doesn’t know what’s best for the kid—but Sam is watching him now, eyes uncomfortably perceptive as he studies the doctor’s vacillation.

In the end, Doc figures there are things that can be done—things that imply neither the endorsement of incest nor the unhealthy denial of self. He settles on something between the extremes—asks of Sam:

“Just promise me something. If you take anything away from our sessions, anything at all, just promise me you’ll see your brother again. It will all make sense then, the things we’ve said here. Promise you’ll see him again.”

Something changes in Sam. The discomfort and apprehension that had slowly built up in Sam’s demeanor over the course of the session—of _all_ their sessions, really—is suddenly, and entirely flushed out. Sam’s body relaxes and he sits back, tosses his hair out of his eyes.

It isn’t that he looks happy, all of a sudden, or even complacent. The way his breath slows, deliberate and heavy—it’s more like _acceptance_ , in the context of mourning. Sadness lingers in lidded, hazel eyes, but Sam’s voice is steady when he replies, “That isn’t something I can promise.”

And that is the last thing Doc ever hears him say. It’s right before the last time he ever sees Samuel Winchester leave his office, tall form sauntering through the door, taking all the air in the room out with him. 

He hopes the kid finds what it is he’s looking for.


End file.
